1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive for flexible removable disks such as floppy disks. The present invention is useful for giving an early warning to computer users when the erase heads of a disk drive fail to operate properly.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional floppy disk drives, data are recorded on a track using a read/write head by overwriting data which may be previously recorded on the track. Erase heads are provided to create non-recorded regions on the opposite sides of the new track by erasing portions of the previous signals which may remain due to possible off-track tracing of the head assembly. However, if the erase heads should become faulty while the read/write head operates properly, portions of signals on old tracks may be left unerased, and floppy disks containing such flaws may go unnoticed by computer users. If such disks are used on a different disk drive, reading errors are likely to occur due to possible off-track tracing errors.